Obama led the nation with grace and integrity
President Barack Obama prepares to leave office with his highest approval ratings since the early days of his presidency, including a 60 percent approval number in a new CNN/ORC poll. It appears many Americans, in comparing the outgoing president with the man who will replace him, are seeing their leader for the past eight years with more favorable eyes. Many would prefer he were staying put.
The nation will miss his graciousness, strength of character, and calm demeanor in stressful circumstances. Obama’s smile and good humor brightened the White House.
Almost forgotten, sometimes, is how bad things were when the former senator from Illinois, then aged 47, took the oath of office. The country was losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, the stock market was in freefall, the GDP shrinking, while millions faced foreclosure and a depression appeared to be a distinct possibility.
The nation avoided the worst. General Motors survived. The stock market has roared back. The nation has experienced a record 73 consecutive months of job growth, with unemployment dipping to 4.9 percent and U.S. GDP growth far outpacing that of Europe.
For many working-class Americans, however, the recovery has been meager or non-existent, with good-paying, blue-collar manufacturing jobs lost to both technological advances and the outsourcing of work to other countries with cheap labor. This, too, is the Obama legacy.
History will be the judge whether Obama made the right calculation when, early in his presidency, he fought to push through a government program to expand health care to uninsured Americans. His Democratic Party controlled the House and Senate.
Universal health care had long been a Democratic aspiration. Obama feared that if he waited, the chance to obtain this goal might permanently pass. Yet the president, who saw his approval ratings plummet, and his party expended tremendous political capital in pushing the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010 without a single Republican vote. It was complex legislation, taking several years to roll out. It contained the necessary, controversial and, in the opinion of many, un-American mandate that citizens had to obtain health insurance or face penalties.
Imperfect as it may be, 20 million have gained health insurance through the ACA.
Democrats would not again control Congress during the Obama presidency. Republicans have had great success running against “Obamacare” and pledging to repeal it. Now fully in control in Washington, Republicans face the formidable challenge of coming up with a health-care law to replace it that doesn’t throw millions off health insurance or spike costs.
On foreign policy, the Obama administration was one of contradictions. Obama decried the holding of prisoners, captured during terrorist roundups after the 9-11 attacks, without trial at Gitmo. Yet the president never achieved his goal of closing the prison. Meanwhile, his aggressive drone program killed hundreds of alleged enemy combatants, and others caught in the crossfire, without any due process.
Troops remain in Afghanistan, long after Obama planned to have them home. Under his watch, the promise of an Arab Spring deteriorated into the horror that is the Islamic State. An aggressive Russia annexed Crimea in Ukraine. China sought to intimidate its neighbors by utilizing man-made islands to expand its nautical territory, in violation of international law.
Yet Obama kept the United States out of any new wars. His reopening of relations with Cuba holds promise for a brighter future for that country. The junta once controlling Myanmar (Burma) peacefully acceded to Democratic reforms, aided by a U.S. diplomatic push. The U.S. led the way to an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The biggest disappointment of the Obama presidency is that political divisions deepened during his time in office, though he was elected in 2008 on a vision of moving past partisanship. Much blame goes to Republicans and their strategy of denying the charismatic young president any legislative victories. But Obama does not escape culpability. It was his challenge to find a path to bipartisan cooperation on key issues. He failed.
Many of his accomplishments rest on executive orders and memos. They include allowing undocumented immigrants brought here as children to emerge from the shadows and seek a higher education and jobs; using environmental rules to reduce greenhouse emissions; expanding the reach of federal gun regulations; and mandating a higher minimum wage for federal contractors.
The weakness is obvious. His successor can undo the orders and promises to do so.
Obama was a president of consequence, having steered the country out of the Great Recession and signed the ACA into law. In success and failure, through triumphs and tragedies, he served with grace and integrity. The Day is proud to have twice endorsed him for president.
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